Jeremy Scahill, author of the award winning book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army; Dedrick Muhammad, Senior Organizer and Research Associate for the Institute for Policy Studies; Tracy Van Slyke, Program Director of The Media Consortium; and James Thindwa, Executive Director of Chicago Jobs with Justice, will offer their thoughts on the aftermath of this historic race for the White House.
This event is free and open to the public. Reservations are required and can be made online, by email at events@prairie.org, or by calling 312.422.5580.
More about the panelists
Jeremy Scahill is an American investigative journalist with expertise on a number of global issues, most notably the recent rise of private military companies. He serves as a correspondent for the U.S. radio and TV program Democracy Now! He is also a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute and a frequent contributor to The Nation. He is the author of the bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army published by Nation Books.
Dedrick Muhammad is the Senior Organizer and Research Associate for the Institute for Policy Studies. Muhammad’s special area of focus is the domestic racial wealth divide particularly between African-Americans and white Americans. He was a writer for the State of The Dream 2004, 2005, and 2008. He also co-authored with Chuck Collins a chapter in the Inequality Reader. He was the former National Field Director for Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and was the Coordinator for the Racial Wealth Divide Project of United For A Fair Economy. He writes regular op-ed pieces found on http://www.inequality.org/ and has been featured on Democracy Now, BET News, CSPAN, NPR, and many other radio and television shows.
Tracy Van Slyke is the director of The Media Consortium, a new network of the nation’s leading, independent progressive media outlets. She is the former publisher of In These Times and in 2005 and 2006 she co-authored the landmark articles "Making Connections: Why is the news so bad? What can progressives do to fix it?" and "Welcome to the Media Revolution: How today’s media makers are shaping tomorrow’s news." Prior to joining In These Times, she was the Communications Director for the National Training and Information Center and worked in Knight Ridder’s Washington D.C. bureau during the 2000 presidential campaign, covering national politics and events. She is also the co-editor of Build the Echo, is on the leadership council for the Progressive Communicator’s Network, and serves on the board of the National Training Information Center.
James Thindwa is the Executive Director of Chicago Jobs with Justice, a coalition of labor, community, religious, civic, student, and policy organizations whose mission is to safeguard the right of workers to organize and to help build stable and sustainable communities. Recently, Thindwa and others coordinated a Chicago Forum on Zimbabwe, a public meeting on the human rights situation there. Previously, he was a lead organizer with Metro Seniors in Action, a city-wide coalition of organizations that advocate for seniors’ interests, including health care, mass transit, prescription drugs, safety and more. He was also a consumer rights activist with Ohio Citizen Action and Citizen’s Action Coalition of Indiana. Thindwa was a leader in the student anti-apartheid movement in 1970’s and 80’s and is originally from Zimbabwe. His most recent article is "No Jobs Make Mean Streets."
This event is co-sponsored by The Public Square, The Mansfield Institute for Social Justice and Transformation, Roosevelt University’s Department of Political Science, the Institute for Policy Studies, and In These Times.
This event is part of The Public Square’s "Looking for Democracy in ’08 and Beyond" series, which is designed to launch a conversation about the kind of world we want to build together by creating public forums for discussion of politics in America through art and dialogue.
Reservations are required. For more information, call 312.422.5580.